Topic

architecture

A collection of 157 issues

Tuesday, September 16th. The shoes I wore to meet the architect....

Everything I ever needed to know about love and yearning I learned from loving books. Meeting for the first time at Elliott Bay over coffee. The book’s beautiful cover: type and image seducing me. Its pages like hands of a new lover to touch and caress slowly, each turn

Architecture and writing rooms.

The table is dark wood with a walnut swirl, 5-6 feet in diameter. It’s nestled in the southeast corner near the window facing Galer Street, holding court with seven wooden chairs on a matching wooden floor. There are always at least two people there when I arrive. The regulars.

Wednesday, October 8th. The shoes I wore to meet the architect....

It is that time. That time of transition. That time when one must think about the meta and the micro. When one must start thinking about materials and textures. And Timelessness. And Visual Power. And designing a house that ages beautifully. Massimo Vignelli offers a manifesto: Visual Power We say

Friday, November 14. The shoes I wore to meet the architect.

The trim. I prefer post-modern. Will prefers the traditional. And, lucky for Mies, we both prefer dogs, despite all this. We are starting to think about materials and surfaces, and interviewing builders now to get a price estimate to take to the mortgage lender. We need a builder who can

Tuesday, December 23. The shoes I wore to meet the architect....

weren’t worn to meet the architect at all. They were worn to meet the builder. The designs aren’t final yet, but they’re close enough to show schematic drawings to builders. So we’re interviewing builders now, meeting skilled craftsmen and professional construction managers to hear about design

On the Seattle Box and building a visceral house.

People who build their own home tend to be very courageous. These people are curious about life. They’re thinking about what it means to live in a house, rather than just buying a commodity and making it work. –Tom Kundig When I first moved to Seattle, I lived in

On the yonic and the phallic.

I have never had any desire to go to Dubai. But that changed this week when I listened to this BBC podcast on why we build skyscrapers, and learned about the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. I want to see it. “Yonic – yo• nic, adj. – a stylized

Saturday, March 26th. The shoes I wore to meet the builder.

Numbers are scary. Numbers signifying your weight, your blood pressure, your bank account balance, your age. Numbers, as it turns out, more often than not highlight more of what you don’t have than what you do. Numbers, as is often the case, focus on what’s left out rather

Friday, December 11. The shoes I wore to meet the architect.

I like wood. Concrete. Tile. Marble. Steel. Mullioned glass. I especially like concrete formed to look like wood. Will likes wood, wood, and more wood. And canvas. Concrete, too (although that took some convincing). Copper metals. Granite. Silver. Tile. “Perfect. It’ll just be a kick-off of interiors thoughts to

On starchitects, domestic violence, and the Stockholm Syndrome.

Le Corbusier. Frank Lloyd Wright. Louis Kahn. Great architects. Lauded visionaries. Master womanizers and manipulators. The film “My Architect”, a documentary about the life of Louis Kahn, provides a disheartening case-in-point. The film summarizes Kahn’s life: immigrating to the US from Estonia as a five-year old, he grew up